Sen. Bernie Sanders rejected a movement to draft him into starting a new political party, telling “Meet The Press” on Sunday that his focus right now is on the Democratic Party as a whole.

“Right now I am working to bring fundamental reform to the Democratic Party, to open the door to the Democratic Party,” said Sanders, who lost the Democratic presidential nomination to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year.

A group of former staff members and delegates for Sanders launched an effort last week called “Draft Bernie for A People’s Party,” which they called a “nationwide effort” to convince the senator “to found a new party rooted in the progressive principles that awoke a political revolution during his campaign for the presidency.”

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As the White House examines their options after a federal appeals panel kept the halt of their immigration executive order in place, Sanders was asked about whether he believes current procedures to let refugees and other people in the country should be improved.

Vetting mechanisms we have now are very, very strong,” he said, but added that he’s open to hearing more from anyone who has a better idea to make them stronger. “I don’t think there’s any debate whether you’re progressive, conservative, or anybody else that we want to keep the United States safe.”

However, Sanders referred to the Trump administration’s immigration policies as “racist” and “based on anti-Muslim ideology.” He then called White House Senior Policy Adviser Stephen Miller’s comments about the immigration order in the “Meet the Press” appearance before him a “shell game” and a distraction from what he said was the president “backtracking on every economic promise that he made to the American people.”

US veterans are returning to Standing Rock and pledging to shield indigenous activists from attacks by a militarized police force, another sign that the fight against the Dakota Access pipeline is far from over.

Army veterans from across the country have arrived in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, or are currently en route after the news that Donald Trump’s administration has allowed the oil corporation to finish drilling across the Missouri river.

The growing group of military veterans could make it harder for police and government officials to try to remove hundreds of activists who remain camped near the construction site and, some hope, could limit use of excessive force by law enforcement during demonstrations.

“We are prepared to put our bodies between Native elders and a privatized military force,” said Elizabeth Williams, a 34-year-old air force veteran, who arrived at Standing Rock with a group of vets late on Friday. “We’ve stood in the face of fire before. We feel a responsibility to use the skills we have.”

It is unclear how many vets may arrive to Standing Rock; some organizers estimate a few dozen are on their way, while other activists are pledging that hundreds could show up in the coming weeks. An estimated 1,000 veterans traveled to Standing Rock in December just as the Obama administration announced it was denying a key permit for the oil company, a huge victory for the tribe.

Dave Archambault II pulled his car over and grabbed a piece of paper. Parked in a quiet lot near his home in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux chairman drew a line graph representing the history of his tribe.

Hundreds of years of despair leading to a peak moment of harmony and euphoria last year, when indigenous people from across the country converged on the area to fight the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

But the movement, he said, now seemed to be imploding. He grew silent, and at the top of the sheet, jotted down three words in small letters: “Divided we fall.”

Archambault has become the face of the internationally recognized battle to stop the pipeline, but the oil corporation and the federal government are no longer his only enemies. Some of the most dedicated activists opposing the project now see Archambault as an adversary, a leader who has weakened and divided “water protectors” and threatened the resistance. His angriest Native American critics call him “DAPL Dave”.

Days after pipeline workers resumed drilling across the Missouri river, which provides drinking water to the tribe and flows a short distance from his house, Archambault explained why he has urged demonstrators to go home.

Miles away, activists were doing the very opposite: organizing supplies, building new camps and vowing to stay in place until the pipeline is defeated.

For the first time, researchers have developed a mathematical equation to describe the impact of human activity on the earth, finding people are causing the climate to change 170 times faster than natural forces.

The equation was developed in conjunction with Professor Will Steffen, a climate change expert and researcher at the Australian National University, and was published in the journal The Anthropocene Review.

The authors of the paper wrote that for the past 4.5bn years astronomical and geophysical factors have been the dominating influences on the Earth system. The Earth system is defined by the researchers as the biosphere, including interactions and feedbacks with the atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere and upper lithosphere.

But over the past six decades human forces “have driven exceptionally rapid rates of change in the Earth system,” the authors wrote, giving rise to a period known as the Anthropocene.

“Human activities now rival the great forces of nature in driving changes to the Earth system,” the paper said.

Austin City Councilman Gregorio Casar said Friday that his office has confirmed “a large amount of Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Austin in the last 24 hours, particularly in the North Lamar and Rundberg area.”

The message came from Casar on his Facebook page and was later tweeted out from his official account as well. Casar said the raids came because he believes, “ICE is out in public arresting people in order to retaliate against our community for standing up for our values against people like Abbott and Trump.”

There have been repeated rumors that ICE was planning actions in the area for several days. Last week, Austin lawyers said ICE officials would only be looking for anyone with an outstanding order of deportation or a warrant for arrest.

Casar called the action by ICE overnight, “beyond reprehensible” and that the raids “instill fear in the community, and they make everyday people fear for their lives.”

“Trump and his allies will do everything they can to divide Americans, invoke fear in vulnerable neighborhoods, and demonize an entire community of people,” Casar wrote on Facebook.

“Not only does questioning law enforcement put our communities at risk, it paints a bull’s-eye on the backs of the brave men and women sworn to protect us under extremely challenging circumstances,” Buckingham said on Facebook.

Concerns that US border patrol agents are targeting minorities have grown in the wake of Donald Trump’s executive order blocking refugees and visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries from entry into the US.

The order caused chaos at US ports of entry when it was enacted two weeks ago and though a federal court has blocked it from being enforced, claims of aggressive, and potentially illegal, treatment have lingered.

Alaoui was born in Morocco but has lived in Canada for more than 20 years, traveling to the US regularly to visit family. But on her way to Vermont for a day of shopping with two of her children and an adult cousin, she was stopped for four hours at the border.

Alaoui – who wears a hijab – said border officials asked her several questions about her faith. “He said ‘Do you practice? Which mosque do you go to? What is the name of the imam? How often do you go to the mosque? What kind of discussions do you hear in the mosque? Does the imam talk to you directly?’”

She said they also examined her phone and asked questions about Arabic videos on the device. Alaoui told them they were videos of daily prayers she had received from friends, to help her and her son as he went through chemo. An agent later explained that the videos were why she was being blocked from entry

The Harry Walker Agency will coordinate speaking engagements for former President and first lady, Barack and Michelle Obama,, who will be represented by two attorneys for contract negotiations regarding potential book deals, a spokesman said Friday.

“President Barack Obama and Mrs. Obama have selected the Harry Walker Agency (HWA) to coordinate their respective speaking engagements,” Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said in a statement. “In addition, Attorneys Robert Barnett and Deneen Howell will manage contract-negotiations with potential publishers for the former president and Mrs. Obama’s respective books.”

The former president and first lady join former White House press secretary Josh Earnest and former President Bill Clinton in relying on the Harry Walker speakers bureau. POLITICO Playbook reported in November that Earnest had signed on with the agency for post-administration speaking gigs.

It’s unclear when the Obamas will begin the speaking circuit or when any of their potential books will be published. Both have been largely silent since leaving the White House three weeks ago.

Dozens of senior law enforcement officials have urged Donald Trump to abandon his draconian crackdown on crime and to instead revive efforts to reform the criminal justice system.

In a report co-written by David Brown, the former Dallas police chief widely praised for his response to the killing of five officers last year, the officials said Trump should rethink his blunt law-and-order plans.

“Decades of experience have convinced us of a sobering reality: today’s crime policies, which too often rely only on jail and prison, are simply ineffective in preserving public safety,” they said.

The report was published on Friday by Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, a coalition of more than 200 current and former senior police officers and prosecutors.

They criticized an executive order on crime fighting signed by Trump on Thursday, saying that the president had encouraged police officers to focus on general lawbreaking rather than to target violent crime.

Too much of the justice department’s $5.5bn yearly funding for local policing is already spent on “antiquated law enforcement tools, such as dragnet enforcement of lower-level offenses”, the officials wrote.

Donald Trump has been accused of targeting Muslims, media outlets and even department stores in his first month in the White House. Now, the US president may have doomed a threatened bumblebee.

An executive order freezing new regulations could push the rusty patched bumblebee towards extinction, environmental groups claim. The 60-day pause on all federal regulations that have yet to be implemented – which includes the bumblebee protection – will review “questions of fact, law, and policy they raise”, according to the White House memo.

The bumblebee was the first bee of any kind in the contiguous US to ever be declared as endangered, with the listing decided during the final days of Barack Obama’s administration. Trump’s halt on new regulations came just one day before protections were formally put in place for the crucial pollinator.

The rusty patched bumblebee was once abundant across 28 states from Connecticut to South Dakota. However, the widespread loss of grasslands and prairies, pesticide use and a parasitic fungus have taken a severe toll on the black- and yellow-striped insect.

The species is now found in scattered populations in the midwest, having suffered an 87% population slump since the mid-1990s. Conservationists fear the pause in protection for the bee could seal its demise, especially if the regulation were delayed further.

A senior White House adviser on Sunday denounced federal judges who have stood in the way of Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban, warning that “the whole world will soon see” that the president’s executive powers “will not be questioned”.

“We have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many cases a supreme branch of government,” said Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to Trump on immigration issues, appearing on the CBS program Face the Nation.

“Our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.”

At the same time, Miller signaled that the White House is contemplating a new, narrower executive order to impose its travel ban on refugees and travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries, after a federal appeals panel seemed to suggest that a revised ban could pass legal scrutiny. The original order is temporarily blocked in federal court.

Pharmaceutical company Kaléo – already under fire for raising the price of an overdose antidote – now plans to put an alternative to the EpiPen on the market for more than seven times the cost of the leading $608 drug.

Kaléo’s epinephrine injector, used to stop severe allergic reactions, will go on sale for $4,500 for a pack of two beginning on 14 February. The auto-injector’s innovative audio instructions walk caregivers through administering less than $5 worth of epinephrine.

Remarkably, because of a system of coupons and discounts, Kaléo’s epinephrine injector Auvi-Q may have the lowest out-of-pocket costs for patients, a strategy some critics say may help some customers, but leads insurance companies to redistribute the cost of the drug through insurance fees to remain profitable.

“It’s a brilliant auto-injector – is it fair to say it’s worth $4,000 itself? That’s $3,000 more than your iPhone, and you can only use it once,” said Dr Joseph Ross, an associate professor of medicine at Yale University who has written about drug pricing for the New England Journal of Medicine. “It’s tricky to know what’s the right price, what’s a fair price.”

Al Franken has repeated his contention that some of his fellow senators think Donald Trump is “not right mentally”.

A few” Republicans are so concerned, the Minnesota Democrat told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “It’s not the majority of them, it’s a few.”

Such concerns are expressed, he said, “in the way all of us have this suspicion. He lies a lot, he says things that aren’t true, that’s the same as lying I guess”.

Franken singled out Trump’s oft-repeated, evidence-free claims that mass voter fraud cost him a popular vote victory against Hillary Clinton. Clinton won nearly three million more ballots than Trump in November but lost in the electoral college.

“Y’know,” Franken added, “three to five million people voted illegally, there was a new one about people going in from Massachusetts to New Hampshire…

“That is not the norm for a president of the United States or actually for a human being.”

A senior White House official has refused to say if Donald Trump supports his national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who reportedly spoke with Russia’s ambassador about sanctions relief weeks before the new president took office.

“It’s not for me to tell you what’s in the president’s mind,” Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser to Trump, told NBC’s Meet the Press. “That’s a question for the president. Asked and answered.”

Asked if the White House had given him any guidance on Flynn’s position, Miller said: “They did not give me anything to say.”

Against a backdrop of potentially hazardous international flashpoints, including North Korean ballistic missile tests and intensified civil war in Ukraine, the president’s closest aide would normally be his national security adviser. Trump has kept Flynn close ever since the retired lieutenant general became one of few former Pentagon chiefs to back his campaign.

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In December, weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Flynn spoke with Russia’s ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, by phone. He and Vice-President Mike Pence denied that he spoke with Kislyak about sanctions placed on high-level officials by the US government, which could have violated a federal law that bars private citizens from interfering in diplomatic disputes.

On Thursday, however, nine current and former officials told the Washington Post that Flynn had in fact discussed sanctions, imposed over Russian actions in Ukraine and hacking political parties in the 2016 US election.

At town halls and district offices around the country this week, Republican members of Congress have heard the din of democracy, directed right at them: boos, jeers and angry questions about healthcare reform and fictional “death panels”, science denial and the ethical quagmire of the White House under Donald Trump.

On Saturday, at his second town hall event in a week, Florida congressman Gus Bilirakis tried to reassure his constituents. About 250 people crowded into the meeting.

Many heckled and shouted down Bill Akins, the chairman of the county Republican party, when he claimed falsely that Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires “anyone over the age of 74 has to go before what is effectively a death panel”.

Called “wrong” and a “liar” by people in the crowd, Akins refused to back down. “You’re wrong,” he said. “OK, children, all right, children.”

Bilirakis tried to intervene, saying Akins was talking about a 15-member panel that advises Congress on reducing Medicare costs.

Thousands of protesters in more than a dozen Mexican cities took to the streets on Sunday to express their fierce opposition to US President Donald Trump, portraying the new leader as a menace to both America and Mexico.

Waving Mexicans flags and hoisting anti-Trump signs in both Spanish and English, some vulgar, many protesters also heaped scorn on their own president, deriding Enrique Peña Nieto as a weak leader who has presided over rampant corruption and violence at home.

Trump and Peña Nieto have been locked in battle over their countries’ deep ties for months, even before Trump won the presidency with promises to get tougher on immigration and trade from Mexico.

In a rare display of national unity, marchers and organisers came from across the country’s deeply polarised political factions, encouraged in part by a pro-march advertising campaign by Televisa, the country’s dominant broadcaster.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., spoke to more than 2,000 in Charleston Sunday evening, a gathering he said might be the largest crowd he’s spoken to while promoting his book “Our Revolution.”

In a speech that largely focused on themes the senator might have spoken on while he was campaigning to be the Democratic party’s presidential nominee, Sanders challenged the people of West Virginia to resist any efforts by President Donald Trump to become an authoritarian and undermine the country’s court system.

“What he is doing is what demagogues have always done, and that is to pick on minorities and try to divide this country up,” Sanders said. “What a real statesman attempts to do — what good government is about — is bringing people together to improve life for all.

”Sanders, who handily won West Virginia’s Democratic primary, told an energized crowd in Charleston’s Municipal Auditorium that more people should run for office and they shouldn’t be deterred from losing an election. When he first entered public service, he won the Burlington, Vermont, mayoral race by just 10 votes.

“So what if you lose, you’ll win the next time,” Sanders said. “Let me just tell you, I also know one of the things that really troubles me when I talk to people, they say, ‘You know Bernie, I just don’t know enough about education or economics or health care to run.’ I work in the United States Senate. If you saw some of the guys in the United States Senate, your confidence in yourself would soar.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is raising questions about the surprise cancellation of a town hall meeting in West Virginia, which was scheduled for Monday morning and was to be filmed for an MSNBC special. In a statement, Sanders said that a National Guard armory that had been booked for the town hall had canceled without explanation, and that the network was unable to find a new venue on short notice.

“If anyone in West Virginia government thinks that I will be intimidated from going to McDowell County, West Virginia, to hold a town meeting, they are dead wrong,” Sanders said in a statement. “If they don’t allow us to use the local armory, we’ll find another building. If we can’t find another building, we’ll hold the meeting out in the streets. That town meeting will be held. Poverty in America will be discussed. Solutions will be found.”

The town hall meeting was set to be held in McDowell County, the poorest part of West Virginia, with the highest rate of drug overdose in the state and the lowest life expectancy of any county in the United States — 64 years. In November, Donald Trump won 74.1 percent of the vote in the county, but in the Democratic primary six months earlier, Sanders won 55.2 percent of the vote.

On Friday night, as first reported by the Charleston Gazette-Mail, MSNBC and Sanders learned that the armory would not be available for the town hall, which was to be moderated by host Chris Hayes. While the state National Guard and new Gov. Jim Justice (D-W.Va.) have not talked about the cancellation, people with knowledge of the event say it had been planned for weeks, and they were told belatedly that the venue could not host a political event.

About this sudden cancellation, I suspect that two things are happening, but both related to the Democratic Party. First, their governor is a Dem and second they have a Dem senator, Joe Manchin. I don’t think either one wants their communities to be exposed for the ills. Manchin also has a daughter whose company is being investigated for price gauging issues. Bernie has been railing against that company for over 18 months.

What’s sadder is that this county has been notably poor for over a half century, when RFK did a poverty tour. There are other places, such as Arthurdale, a community built by Eleanor Roosevelt in the mid 1930’s, to try to raise the standards of living in such squalid conditions, but the project turned out to be fraught with problems.

I wish there were better ways to help WV as they get a lot of federal help (earmarks, one time monies), but it’s not consistent, which is likely what Bernie would say.

After selling more than 1,500 tickets in one week to an upcoming speech by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Kansas Democratic Party is moving the event from its convention hotel to Topeka High School, party officials said.

Sanders’ ticket sales quickly outstripped the space in the ballroom at the Topeka Ramada Hotel and Convention Center, where the party usually holds the keynote speech for its annual Washington Days convention, party executive director Kerry Gooch said at Saturday’s 4th Congressional District Democratic convention.

Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, energized millions of millennial and liberal voters and vaulted to national prominence when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. His campaign events drew fervent supporters to arenas around the country.

“We are super-excited to have Sen. Sanders coming to speak at our state convention,” Gooch said. “We’re hoping that Sen. Sanders is going to come and it’s going to draw a lot of his supporters to help them get more engaged in the Democratic Party.”

Sanders is probably the most popular Democratic Party figure in Kansas, having won last year’s state presidential caucus by more than 2-1 over Clinton, Gooch said.

U.S. immigration authorities arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in at least a half-dozen states this week in a series of raids that marked the first large-scale enforcement of President Trump’s Jan. 25 order to crack down on the estimated 11 million immigrants living here illegally.

Officials said the raids targeted known criminals, but they also netted some immigrants without criminal records, an apparent departure from similar enforcement waves during the Obama administration. Last month, Trump substantially broadened the scope of who the Department of Homeland Security can target to include those with minor offenses or no convictions at all.

Trump has pledged to deport as many as 3 million undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Immigration officials confirmed that agents this week raided homes and workplaces in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, the Los Angeles area, North Carolina and South Carolina, netting hundreds of people. But Gillian Christensen, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said they were part of “routine” immigration enforcement actions. ICE dislikes the term “raids,” and prefers to say authorities are conducting “targeted enforcement actions,” she said.

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Immigration activists said the crackdown went beyond the six states DHS identified, and said they had also documented ICE raids of unusual intensity during the past two days in Florida, Kansas, Texas and Northern Virginia.

That undocumented immigrants with no criminal records were arrested and could potentially be deported sent a shock wave through immigrant communities nationwide amid concerns that the U.S. government could start going after law-abiding people.

Across the United States, some unauthorized immigrants are keeping their children home from school. Others have suspended after-school visits to the public library. They have given up coffee shop trips and weekend restaurant dinners with family.

Some don’t answer knocks on their doors. They’re taping bedsheets over windows and staying off social media. Nervous parents and their children constantly exchange text messages and phone calls.

From New York to Los Angeles, a series of immigration arrests this week have unleashed waves of fear and uncertainty across immigrant communities.

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“There are people that I work with who essentially want to go dark,” said Cesar Vargas, one of the first immigrants without legal status in New York state to be sworn in as a lawyer.

“They don’t want to be public in any way whatsoever. They spend less time on the street. They go to work and go straight back home. They don’t go on Facebook. They put curfews on themselves.”

Despite the Arizona Senator’s weekend absence on a Sunday, protestors gathered at John McCain’s office to speak out against immigration raids.

They serenaded the senator’s empty office on the street with chanting and music. The crowd of more than a hundred people said they were horrified by recent nationwide raids. It was organized by the activist group Indivisible Southern Arizona.

“We’re serious about telling Sen. McCain and our other members of Congress that we absolutely do not support these immigrant round-ups,” Kristen Randall of Tucson said in a news release. “That said, we want any demonstration we have to remain peaceful and productive. We’re hoping this serenade will show Sen. McCain that we’re not violent rioters or paid protestors. We’re parents and veterans and workers and students. We’re everyday Arizonans who have real concerns about President Trump and those around him.”

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In a written statement dated January 29, Senator McCain said, “We should not turn our backs on those refugees who have been shown through extensive vetting to pose no demonstrable threat to our nation, and who have suffered unspeakable horrors, most of them women and children.” The Arizona senator also stated “this executive order will become a self-inflicted wound in the fight against terrorism.

Ryan Kelly said the statements weren’t enough.

“No. No. We appreciate it – and most of us here sent letters, emails, and calls thanking him for his statement. But we need more than a statement. We need action,” said Kelly, and organizer with Indivisible Southern Arizona.

Afghan officials and local residents said Sunday that 22 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed during a joint operation carried out by U.S. and Afghan forces last week in the southern Helmand province.

The presidential envoy for security in Helmand, Jabar Qahraman, said the raid against Taliban insurgents in the Sangin district killed 13 people from one family and nine from another.

“We are saddened to hear the news of civilians being killed,” he said. “When the Taliban use civilians as their shield against security forces, such incidents occur.”

U.S. Navy Cpt. Bill Salvin, a military spokesman, said “we are working diligently to determine whether civilians were killed or injured as a result of U.S. airstrikes” carried out to support Afghan forces in and around Sangin. The investigation is “continuing and has not reached any conclusions,” he added in a written statement.

“The movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is wreaking financial havoc on the companies and banks involved,” Adamson writes. “In August 2016, Energy Transfer Partners reported ‘it could lose $1.4 billion in a year if delays continue … Even a temporary delay would mean loses of over $430 million.’ ETP is attempting to raise new debt. This could mean that the banks are ramping up pressure on the company to repay their loans out of concern DAPL will never be finished. In November 2016, Energy Transfer Partners announced a merger with sister company Sunoco Logistics in order to raise much needed cash to finish construction. Energy Transfer Partners’ own shareholders are filing a lawsuit to block the merger, alleging conflicts of interest.”

Like I said: The financial challenges are just beginning.

I also have a big idea I want to toss out. One that could have significant financial implications. So we know the project will take some 60 days to complete. And about three weeks to actually transfer oil from North Dakota to the end of the pipeline.

What if on that day, the day the oil reaches markets, there is a Day Without Oil. One day. It take a massive organizational effort. But why not? What if every ally of Standing Rock, every community that has its own Standing Rock, every one who is concerned about water, takes a day off from oil? Either walk every where that day — or just stay home. Do what it takes to remind the companies, and the government itself, who’s really in charge of the economy.

More than 30 people protested along Sims Way in Port Townsend on Saturday, urging people to divest their money from Wells Fargo and Chase banks due to the banks’ connections to the recently revived Dakota Access Pipeline.

The protesters were a staple outside of the Port Townsend Wells Fargo Bank through November and December. The protests subsided after a Dec. 4 order from then-President Barack Obama that halted construction on the pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota.

The protests are back in full swing due to an executive order from President Donald Trump and an easement granted Feb. 7 by Robert Speer, acting secretary of the Army. The decision allowed for the termination of a notice of intent to perform an environmental impact statement.

“Energy is still pretty high,” said Sabrina Hill, a member of the Makah Tribe who joined in the protest.

“Until they start pumping oil through that pipeline, we still have faith that our actions can do something.”

About 75 people — young and old, carrying signs, shouting chants and singing songs — marched Sunday afternoon from Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to the Kenwood-area home of U.S. Bank CEO Richard Davis to protest the bank’s funding of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL).

Organizers from MN350 said they wanted to show their love for Davis, 58, who plans to step down as CEO in April. Organizers said Davis has publicly supported President Donald Trump and has said his policies are good for business.

They hoped to change his heart and mind about the bank’s financing of the fossil fuel industry, including a $275 million credit line to the companies building DAPL.

In front of Davis’ home, Ryan Franke and Greta Larson acted out a short, heavily modified scene from Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” complete with a balcony prop. Romeo stood for Big Oil; Juliet was U.S. Bank.

“What light from yonder window breaks,” Franke read. “It is the burning oilfield, and U.S. Bank is the spark.”

A group of students and community members gathered on the UA Mall on Feb. 10, chanting “water is life,” to demand the UA divest from Wells Fargo bank, a financier of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“Today we are announcing the launch of a campaign to get the UA to divest from Wells Fargo, to end its contract and end its relationship,” said Magdalena Rios, a member of the Chukson/Tucson Water Protectors.

The campaign, which will involve marches, rallies and teach-ins, plans to show solidarity with members of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation and pressure the Arizona Board of Regents and the UA to end relationships will all organizations supporting damaging projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline.

“Water is life for all of us, and the sovereign rights of Native Americans have been violated, and when their rights are violated mine and your rights are violated,” said Najima Rainey, a representative of Tucson’s Black Lives Matter.

Outrage over the Trump administration helped bring tens of thousands of marchers to downtown Raleigh, North Carolina on Saturday.

Trump and the policies he will try to enact with the GOP-led Congress on immigration, health care and civil rights motivated many at Saturday’s march.

Rev. William Barber, president of the state NAACP branch and leader of the “Moral Monday” movement, said in a speech: “A racist and greedy extremism that came to power in North Carolina four years ago now controls the White House and the Congress in D.C. Millions are afraid. A loud majority is outraged and the whole world is in turmoil asking what can we do. Well, we know we’ve got a hard fight ahead, but we know how to win.”

Barber called Trump an “extremist, narcissistic con artist” who is “obviously unsuited for the job of president.” He said they march “because it’s wrong to defend and excuse the lies and the fear and the hate of Trumpism” that has brought “extreme federal appointees and white nationalists into the White House. It’s wrong and it’s racist and it’s demonic to (instill) fear into our immigrant and our Muslim brothers and sisters. It’s wrong to build a wall to keep Mexicans out while you let the Russians in. Bowing down is not an option. Standing down is not an option. The guy in the White House is a mortal, not a god.”

Anti-abortion groups called for ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ demonstrations at more than 200 Planned Parenthood locations throughout the United States on Saturday to pressure President Donald Trump to strip the women’s health provider of federal funding.

Then, Planned Parenthood supporters got organized.

And the response has been massive: Hundreds of different counter-demonstrations, large, small and in between, were held across the country Saturday – overwhelming the anti-choice rallies.

In St. Paul, Minnesota a police commander on scene estimated the original protesters numbered about 500 while the counter-protesters numbered about 5,000 to 5,500. Similar reports are coming in from all around the country.

A fundraiser to “welcome home” Chelsea Manning launched just two days ago has already surpassed $50,000, which observers say is a testament to the inspiration that the transgender leader and military whistleblower has provided to so many supporters.

More than 1,200 people have donated upwards of $53,000 to the effort, with the goal of reaching $100,00 to help Manning pay for basic living expenses upon her arrival home on May 17.

“Upon her release she will need logistical, emotional, and financial support to safely transition into the free world,” notes the GoFundMe page organized by Manning’s friends and family. “For the first time in her life, Chelsea will have the opportunity to live freely as her authentic self, to grow her hair, engage with her friends, and build her own networks of love and support. We want her to have the tools to do that and to overcome the years of abuse she has experienced in custody.”

After seven years of incarceration, her sentence was commuted by Barack Obama last month in one of his final acts as president.

Noting the speed with which donations are pouring in, journalist Glenn Greenwald, a vocal advocate of Manning who wrote a letter of clemency on her behalf, wrote online Friday, “Her act of conscience & subsequent courage has inspired many people.”

In 2010, Thomas Drake, a former senior employee at the National Security Agency, was charged with espionage for speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about a bloated, dysfunctional intelligence program he believed would violate Americans’ privacy. The case against him eventually fell apart, and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, but his career in the NSA was over.

Though Drake was largely vindicated, the central question he raised about technology and privacy has never been resolved. Almost seven years have passed now, but Pat Eddington, a former CIA analyst, is still trying to prove that Drake was right.

While working for Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., Eddington had the unique opportunity to comb through still-classified documents that outline the history of two competing NSA programs known as ThinThread and Trailblazer. He’s seen an unredacted version of the Pentagon inspector general’s 2004 audit of the NSA’s failures during that time, and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests.

In January, Eddington decided to take those efforts a step further by suing the Department of Defense to obtain the material, he tells The Intercept. “Those documents completely vindicate” those who advocated for ThinThread at personal risk, says Eddington.

The heir to Saudi Arabia’s throne has been awarded a medal by the new director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, who honoured his contributions to “counter-terrorism” work.

Mike Pompeo, making his first overseas tour since being confirmed as CIA chief in late January, made the presentation to Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef at a weekend ceremony, the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.